Examples Of Iniquity In The Great Gatsby

According to some, love of money is the root of all evil. In some cases, simply being near money can cause moral groundings to erode. F. Scott Fitzgerald lived in a time where money was shored up in rich houses and thrown about lavishly in big parties. This culture of wealth and pleasure was his modern world, and he wrote The Great Gatsby to comment about it. The title character of the book, Jay Gatsby, has exorbitant wealth, as do Tom and Daisy Buchanan, other vital characters. All these people express a certain type of iniquity that shows Fitzgerald’s commentary about his modern world. Within The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald posits that proximity to wealth causes vices such as carelessness, hypocrisy, and corruption, eventually ruining lives.

When the narrator and Gatsby are first getting to know each other, Gatsby almost gets pulled over by the police until they recognize him. Nick asks why they let him go and Gatsby replies, “‘I was able to do the commissioner a favor once, and he sends me a Christmas card every year,’” (Fitzgerald 68). Gatsby’s ample coffers had somehow helped the commissioner, and the repayment of that favor manifested itself in corruption. These coffers, however, are not even remotely legal. In Gatsby’s own words, he has “a little business on the side, a sort of sideline, you understand,” (Fitzgerald 82). He is constantly getting discreet calls from Chicago or Detroit about business that he must attend to, which insinuates to the reader that it is illegal in some way. He is corrupting the bonds business with his wealth and power to increase said attributes. Later in the book, Tom exposes him further by accusing, “‘That drug store stuff was just small change… but you’ve got something on now that Walter’s afraid to tell me about.’” (Fitzgerald 134). Gatsby’s casual acceptance of this towards everyone but Daisy is evidence of its truth. Not only was he corrupting drugstores to sell illegal liquor, he is participating in an entirely more prodigious scandal that no one can know about. Gatsby’s riches, unlike the hereditary jewels of the Buchanans, were in constant fluctuation and thus required corrupt practices to supplement them. This vice arose from the nearness Gatsby had to his own money and how much value he put on the number in his bank